As this course is supported by a grant from INTAS, which covers the participation costs of selected applicants from NIS countries (New Independent States of the former Soviet Union) applications from these countries are encouraged.

NIS countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Grant recipients are expected to be of 35 years of age or less at the starting date of the course and must be permanently living in one of the NIS and be NIS citizens. (NIS scientists with a permanent residence outside the NIS or with a temporary research position lasting longer than 6 months outside the NIS at the time of the summer school are not eligible to receive INTAS support.)

The INTAS grant includes tuition fee, accommodation, subsistence and travel costs at the cheapest possible price (APEX, PEX or "excursion" must be used). Visa and travel insurance expenses may be included in the travel costs.

In the 1970s, civil wars began to outpace inter-state wars in both duration and intensity. The number of ongoing civil wars now dwarfs that of inter-state wars; organized violence has effectively shifted from the international to the sub-state level. In a vast majority of these conflicts, at least one of the combatants was an armed militia or ethnic group. Given the growing salience of sectarian conflict, it is important to sort out their general causes as a why of understanding the growing prevalence of civil or ethnic wars around the world.

This class is composed of three modules. In the first module, students will explore the interaction between ethnopolitics and intra-state conflict as well as different methods for conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. In the second and third modules, students apply these theories to Eurasia and the Middle East—two regions particularly driven by sectarian violence. Doing so will demonstrate how theoretical frameworks may be applied to actual cases of conflict in order to understand why these regions are so turbulent as well as assess the record of previous and ongoing mediation efforts.